Vegetarian Smashed Cauliflower and Roasted Asparagus Sandwich

Back in my restaurant days, for the longest time the restaurant had made its mark serving just two meals a day. Breakfast and lunch. It was perfect for a vegetarian place since so many dishes for those two meals can naturally be vegetarian and no one thinks twice. Poached eggs, oatmeal, salads, eggplant parmesan. We’d have regular customers come for years and never realize it was a vegetarian place until they were craving a tuna sandwich and found out after asking that their beloved cafe was a vegetarian place.

Then one summer we decided to try adding a third service, dinner. A two meal service was easy logistically to run lean and mean staffing and prep wise, but a third meal threw a huge wrench in the operations. But we all put our heads together, everyone pushed and worked hard to make a new system. Even worse than the logistics was to create a unique vegetarian dinner menu that would be special enough to attract even non-veg heads to our humble but stylish establishment. Fortunately the owner’s mom was brilliant in the kitchen. She always had a hand in developing most of the amazing recipes we served, and for the dinner menu she came up with some beauties.

Out of all the amazing dishes, there was one that was a hands down staff favorite. An open-face sandwich with cauliflower puree, asparagus, and a poached egg. This wasn’t a sandwich trying to convert a regular carnivore treat into a vegetarian substitution. It was a brilliant sandwich which happened to be vegetarian. So many things about the sandwich were great, but for most of us it was the cauliflower puree which sent it over the top. We could, and would, eat the cauliflower puree straight up or on some crostini. Cooked in milk with garlic until soft then pureed up. Oh so good.

You’d think the poached egg would have been the star, but so many times we would make it up for ourselves without the egg. Just the cauliflower puree balanced by the asparagus. Most of us had already been working 10-12 hours by dinner time and it was nice to have something a little less rich before going home and passing out. So that’s how we’ve re-created the sandwich now here at home, staff meal style. Toast up our favorite bread, a nice thick layer of the cauliflower, which we’ve smashed instead of pureed to give an added texture. Some roasted asparagus and finished off with the sweet refreshing slices of tomatoes.

-Todd

Cooking Method:

chop cauliflower

brown the garlic

add cauliflower…

then add milk….

cook cauliflower in milk till soft

hello asparagus

roasted asparagus

voila! now assemble sandwich

now you can eat! and share.

Recipe was originally published in 2012 and republished in 2017 with updated photos.

0 from 0 votes

Print

Smashed Cauliflower and Roasted Asparagus Sandwich

Prep Time

20mins

Cook Time

40mins

Total Time

1hrs

This sandwich is also great with a poached egg added on top. Both the smashed cauliflower and roasted asparagus can be made ahead of time and then heated and assembled when read serve the sandwiches.

Wow, what a great idea! I am always looking for ways to use cauliflower. It’s absolutely not a favorite vegetable of mine and I always get it in my CSA. I even tried broccoli and cauliflower potstickers!

Absolutely beautiful – mashed cauliflowers on toast. I think I do have one or two heads lying around in the fridge. Will definitely try this out, with a good drizzle of garlic infused olive oil and a hearty slice of sourdough rye bread. 🙂 Thanks for sharing.

Didn’t find any cauliflower and the weather was too gloomy I simply couldn’t force myself to drop by the groceries. Tried the recipe out with pumpkin instead – very nice on whole meal toast with some Dijon mustard. The pumpkin was probably a tad sweeter than cauliflower so I increased the quantity of salt by a generous teaspoon. Consistency was good although I prefer it a bit thicker. I noted the milk curdled a bit with prolonged simmering (perhaps my pumpkins require a longer time to soften enough for mashing?) – next time I may try cooking the pumpkins the usual way, mash, and thin it out with a bit of milk at the end. Thanks again for the inspiration.

Cauliflower is one of my favorite vegetables. Once I started roasting it I can’t seem to eat it any other way because it’s so good roasted – but this sandwich is certainly tempting me to branch out again with my cauliflower preparations. Plus, we have local fresh asparagus available right now!